Chapter 47
In the darkness, Lu Qiujin raised his eyes and cast a glance at Cheng Yunshao.
Luo Shizhen didn’t think that much of it. Acknowledging the suggestion, he took the rope and passed it to the back.
All of them were Awakeners. Even though it was dark underground, it didn’t hinder their strong night vision capabilities. After walking for nearly ten minutes, they still hadn’t reached their destination.
“I get it now.”
Qin Yinian walked along the winding path: “That wasn’t a python just now, it was an earthworm, right? It’s way too good at digging tunnels.”
Luo Shizhen didn’t realize this was a joke and earnestly replied: “It might be a tunnel dug out by the Gu Chong. Its tongue is a Gu Chong.”
That Gu Chong actually looked quite appetizing.
Luo Shizhen rubbed his stomach: “Qin Yinian, do you still have bananas? Could you give me another one?”
“Here, I brought them all for you. You can eat as many as you want.”
Firelight appeared in the darkness. Qin Yinian extravagantly used his ability to bring a banana in front of Luo Shizhen.
Luo Shizhen held the rope with one hand and ate the banana with the other. By the time he finished, his stomach had reached a state of fullness.
But even though his stomach was full, psychologically, he was still hungry.
He couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something very, very fragrant deep within the cave.
It smelled even better than anything he had “eaten” before, just like a plate of deep-fried prawns.
The school cafeteria frequently switched up its gourmet dishes. Luo Shizhen had never eaten deep-fried prawns before. After arriving at the school, he took one bite and was absolutely blown away.
The outer coating of the deep-fried prawn was golden and crispy, but after biting into it, the inside was incredibly tender and smooth. The school chef’s seasoning was very experienced; it didn’t cover up the delicious flavor of the prawn meat, yet it added an extra layer of spicy aroma.
Luo Shizhen absolutely loved eating this dish. After the chefs noticed, they often made it for him. Sometimes, when he was exhausted from training and walked into the cafeteria, the chef would greet him with a smile, saying that today they had his favorite deep-fried prawns.
At those times, no matter how tiring the training was, he felt it was nothing.
However, why did he feel that the Gu Chong smelled like deep-fried prawns?
Luo Shizhen didn’t quite understand. He simply assumed there was still some knowledge about Energy Users that he didn’t grasp yet.
When they reached a fork in the path, the group didn’t know which way to go.
Luo Shizhen accurately pointed toward the direction where the scent of deep-fried prawns was coming from: “I think it’s this way.”
Cheng Yunshao and the others were a bit surprised.
Qin Yinian asked: “Shizhen, you can sense it?”
Luo Shizhen nodded: “I don’t know if my feeling is right, but I smell it coming from here.”
Wen Hu: “Then we’ll go this way!”
He didn’t think or hesitate at all; his thoughts were incredibly straightforward.
If you want to pursue someone, of course you have to constantly maintain your support for the person you like.
If you can’t even do that, what’s the point of pursuing someone?
Cheng Yunshao thought about it and said: “Energy Users are more sensitive to Qi. Since we can’t tell which way to go and Shizhen has a feeling, let’s head this way.”
The others naturally had no objections either, and the group followed the direction Luo Shizhen pointed.
After going in, there were unexpectedly even more forks.
Originally there were only two forks, but it turned into four. After Luo Shizhen chose one of the four, there were eight more, then sixteen.
Lu Qiujin gently touched the soil inside the tunnel and asked Qin Yinian to help strike a light. By the firelight, he observed for over ten seconds.
“It seems we are almost there. The soil on this path is still very fresh. It should have been newly dug out by that python.”
Qin Yinian, acting as a ruthless fire-making machine on the side, clicked his tongue upon hearing this:
“It really goes through a lot of trouble just to return home. It practically wants to build a maze underground.”
Cheng Yunshao frowned: “Strange, this is its home base. Logically, it should have established a route back long ago. The forks we are seeing now were basically all made by it temporarily.”
“This situation looks more like it’s terrified of something. To avoid being hunted down, it temporarily created all these diversions.”
Hearing this, Luo Shizhen also nodded, earnestly joining the discussion.
When he encountered the Gu Chong disguised as the python’s tongue face-to-face earlier, he had felt that the other party seemed very afraid.
“Yeah, I also felt like it was scared, I just couldn’t tell what it was scared of.”
Wen Hu: “Scared of what? It’s a Tier Three, while the highest level among us is only Tier Two.”
Cheng Yunshao repeatedly recalled the scene of the giant python appearing and then leaving, feeling that something wasn’t quite right.
It ran away far too quickly.
There wasn’t even a direct confrontation; it just ran at the drop of a hat, without a single shred of hesitation.
Now it had dug so many tunnels underground to cover up the real route. It couldn’t possibly be that the python had nothing better to do while escaping, so it dug a few new paths for exercise, right?
Cheng Yunshao couldn’t think of a reason, so he could only forcefully attribute it to the teachers responsible for protecting them.
“Maybe the teacher following and protecting us is a high-tier Awakener. This Anomaly sensed it, so it wants to hide.”
Luo Shizhen had a sudden realization.
“So that’s how it is!”
This made sense.
Perhaps when they encountered that giant python, the teachers were silently watching nearby.
After Cheng Yunshao finished analyzing, he looked at Luo Shizhen again:
“Good thing we have Shizhen, an Energy User, who can sensitively detect where the Anomaly is hiding. Otherwise, even if we found the underground area, we’d probably just be led around in circles making no progress.”
He was praised.
Luo Shizhen smiled somewhat sheepishly, but was also a bit happy that he could contribute to the team.
In the firelight, he looked at Cheng Yunshao and smiled. His eyes were bright and dark, and his smile appeared a bit shy due to his embarrassment. The reddish glow of the fire illuminated his face, making it look as though he were blushing.
Cheng Yunshao had merely been analyzing normally, but upon suddenly seeing this scene, he froze.
No wonder Wen Hu liked him. The way Luo Shizhen looked when he smiled truly made people feel peaceful.
Moreover, perhaps because Luo Shizhen possessed the Purification ability, even though the two of them hadn’t had much contact and were merely walking one in front of the other, the restless Qi on Cheng Yunshao’s body seemed to have calmed down significantly.
Cheng Yunshao had only looked at Luo Shizhen’s face for two seconds before the firelight silently vanished.
—The area around the group plunged back into darkness.
Qin Yinian: “I think we’re almost there. Better to conserve our energy and prepare for combat.”
Hearing this, Luo Shizhen immediately felt it made sense.
“Okay!”
He touched the brick placed in his pocket and, finding that it was still there, instantly felt much more at ease.
After another series of twists and turns, the group saw a bright light ahead.
They should have arrived.
Lu Qiujin had recovered some of his strength. Several plants appeared; however, they didn’t block for him, but instead blocked in front of Luo Shizhen.
He leaned in close to Luo Shizhen’s ear and whispered:
“Be careful. If the situation doesn’t look right, immediately call for emergency backup.”
They were too close. Lu Qiujin lowered his eyes and held his breath. If he moved forward just a bit more, his lips could even touch Luo Shizhen’s earlobe.
In the past, the school teachers used to say that combat was the best occasion to cultivate feelings between classmates, but Lu Qiujin had always brushed it off.
Right now, in the dark, holding the same rope with Luo Shizhen, being this close, and talking pressed up against each other.
Lu Qiujin’s eyes grew a bit unfocused as he thought to himself: The things taught by the school do have some merit after all.
Luo Shizhen nodded.
He actually thought this was some sort of pre-combat protocol, so he immediately imitated his actions, leaning in to Cheng Yunshao’s ear to whisper the exact same thing.
Lu Qiujin: “…”
Being imitated, Cheng Yunshao, who could feel Luo Shizhen pressed against him and was acutely aware of the other’s body temperature, didn’t move his body, but his earlobes instantly flared with heat.
Always so composed, even his speech became a little stuttered.
At this moment, Cheng Yunshao almost doubted his own judgment.
Could it be that Luo Shizhen wasn’t actually earnest and clumsy, but the proactive and forward type?
He turned his head to look. An Awakener’s good eyesight allowed him to see that Luo Shizhen’s expression was completely normal, his eyes clear, and his breathing even.
This made Cheng Yunshao—whose breathing had been thrown into chaos by a single sentence—appear exceptionally unseemly in comparison.
Cheng Yunshao hurriedly turned his head back.
“O-Okay.”
Luo Shizhen waited a second, and when he didn’t get any other reaction, he asked him quietly again:
“Aren’t you going to remind Wen Hu?”
Cheng Yunshao touched his scalding hot earlobe: “Wen Hu has participated in combat before, he doesn’t need a reminder.”
He thought to himself that the darkness seemed to amplify the reveries in a person’s heart, adding a touch of ambiguity to seemingly ordinary actions.
This was bad. If he had known, he would have swapped places with Wen Hu.
Wen Hu had kept his ears perked up listening to the movements behind him. Seeing Luo Shizhen and Cheng Yunshao whispering to each other, his thoughts actually aligned with this temporary teammate’s as he anxiously said:
“Cheng Yunshao, let’s swap positions, shall we?”
Cheng Yunshao’s tone was calm: “We’re already here. I’m afraid swapping positions now might cause accidents. Besides, your defense is the strongest among us. Aside from you, no one else taking the lead can guarantee the squad’s safety.”
Wen Hu thought about it and felt it made sense.
At least his tiger form had a massive physique and could block damage for the teammates behind him. Although Cheng Yunshao’s puppet could also block damage, it was a humanoid puppet after all; how could it block as much as he could?
Blocking damage for teammates equaled blocking damage for Shizhen. Thinking this, Wen Hu no longer brought up the matter of wanting to swap positions.
Wen Hu transformed into his tiger form, and the group cautiously moved forward.
Inside the room.
A middle-aged man seemed to sense something and snapped his gaze outward.
“They’re here! The Guardians have caught up!”
Another, younger man sneered: “What is there to be afraid of? With my precious here, this place is entirely populated by my precious’s subjects. Even if a Tier Four Guardian comes, they will be completely devoured.”
He waved towards the corner of the wall, his eyes full of fanaticism: “Precious, come quick. Top-tier food has delivered itself to our door.”
There was no movement in the corner.
The middle-aged man looked at him suspiciously: “Is your precious really as obedient as you say?”
“Of course. We formed a contract, after all.”
A large patch of the young man’s face was rotted away, vaguely taking the shape of a Gu Chong. He looked more like a malicious spirit than a human.
This was the price of the contract.
He closed his eyes, summoning his precious: “My precious, come, come out to eat.”
The shape of the Gu Chong on the young man’s face slowly swam around, and there was finally movement in the corner. The massive python stuck its head out.
It assessed the situation, then crawled right back in, frantically digging a tunnel, wanting to escape.
The two men: “…”
The middle-aged man: “You’re screwing up at a time like this? If the Guardians catch us, I’m dead meat!”
The young man also lost his previous composure. Just as he was about to continue summoning, his eardrums were suddenly pierced by a sharp, miserable shriek.
He clutched his ears and screamed in agony as blood slowly trickled from his ear canals. With blurred vision, the young man finally realized that it was the densely packed tiny Gu Chong on the walls letting out those sharp screams.
“They are talking!! They are talking!!”
Unable to hear anything else, he loudly relayed the Gu Chong’s meaning.
The middle-aged man was similarly clutching his ears in extreme agony: “What?! What are they saying!!”
Neither of them noticed that the python desperately digging the tunnel had opened its mouth, and the giant black Gu Chong inside was shivering uncontrollably.
The Gu Chong shrieked piercingly. Following the feelings of their “King,” their wings trembled in absolute terror.
The sharp cries of the bugs filled the cave, forming what sounded like a massive echo.
“——”
“——”
Having formed a contract with the Gu Chong, the young man could vaguely sense its fear, its terror, and its frantic desire to escape.
“It’s coming!!”
“It says!! It’s coming!!”
The middle-aged man’s face twisted fiercely: “Who is ‘it’? What the hell is going on?!! Can you speak more clearly?!!”
“What did you tell me before! You said it was foolproof, that no one could find us! What is this situation now! I thought your precious Gu Chong listened to you!”
The young man’s expression was even uglier than his. He staggered to his feet:
“How should I know who it is! I only know that my Gu Chong has sensed a terrifying entity approaching this way.”
“It has never been this terrified before. No, we have to run right now! Leave immediately!”
“Run?! Where can we run to now?! The outside is definitely covered with inescapable nets; where am I supposed to run?!”
The middle-aged man swayed as he stood up and looked towards the stone platform in the center. On it lay a sleeping boy.
He gritted his teeth: “We finally managed to capture someone with Awakening abilities. If we’re going to run, fine, but transfer his ability to me first!”
—The sharp insect cries also reached the ears of Luo Shizhen and the others.
Something was relying on the tiny Gu Chong to transmit a voice.
Twisted, carrying infinite terror, faint and indistinct, attempting to reach Luo Shizhen’s ears.
—”I am willing to submit to you…”
—”Please forgive my mistakes, spare me…”
Luo Shizhen dug at his ear: “I think I heard some kind of sound.”
Qin Yinian: “What sound? I only hear bugs crying.”
Luo Shizhen looked a bit dazed and swallowed hard.
“That voice seemed to be saying…”
“Ahead, there’s some deep-fried prawns made by Master Wang. They’re super delicious, come eat them quickly.”
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